


you dream in continuity of different mistakes

by erintoknow



Series: Aria-Rough Drafts [5]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Abuse, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Theseus and the Minotaur (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Near Death Experience, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Prose Poem, Suicide, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 18:41:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19301566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erintoknow/pseuds/erintoknow
Summary: you’re not awake. you can’t be, because you’re here.this is a dream, you promise yourself every timeyou wake up to cinderblocks and sodium lampsproof that when marooned, you bring the water with you'i am dreaming now' is a queer prayer'theseus will come back for me,'is a queerer one.





	you dream in continuity of different mistakes

beige, off-white, stained yellow. why? why can’t you be brighter?

_you dream in a continuity of different mistakes_

a city you haven’t been to yet, steel laced in vines, add liberally trees and identical buildings for filler. late again, the schedule doesn’t make chronological sense: always the right place at the wrong time or the wrong time at the right place but today you’ve made the two axises align and here you are the right place at the right time and the courtyard is filled with old-school ghosts. less physically present than textually informed and are they the ghosts or are you the one stepping back into dead lives? a woman you remember too clearly for no interaction asks “how are you?” and steps off the bridge that is now a classroom.

no one recognizes you: this stranger body borrowing someone else’s haunting.

you’re not awake. you can’t be, because you’re here.  
this is a dream, you promise yourself every time  
you wake up to cinderblocks and sodium lamps  
proof that when marooned, you bring the water with you  
'i am dreaming now' is a queer prayer  
                   'theseus will come back for me,'  
                   is a queerer one.

in flattening every note left  
you expose yourself  
        without your bone chimes hung up  
        to ward off the master  
        come to collect her due

always too polite to drip blood and breath  
into an appropriate receptacle

cement kisses  
tear against your dermis  
a molding that is, like yourself:  
sung entirely in artifice  
days of dust and scraping  
under fingers, raising hairs

it starts with you brushing your teeth, and something moves in your mouth that shouldn’t. did you get punched in the mouth today? you can’t remember. it doesn’t matter, the mirror’s enough of a punch. too-pale skin, sick, never seeing the california sun. why california? a criss-cross of bright orange lines run over your chest, down your arms. in between the breasts you don’t have here –which you never had so why are you thinking it– everything runs into a source-code of lines. they’ve saran-wrapped you like a piece of meat, pricing available for easy-scanning.  
today’s sale: $6.99 lb. 'what a steal,' the butcher would promise you as she carves into your side.

raking plastic across enamel  
defoliates your gums:  
a sponge you can’t squeeze clean

blood mixes with toothpaste and no one  
taught you not to swallow fluoride  
in non-lethal doses.

inspecting the reflection of your teeth is simple enough.  
it’s important for every tool,  
practice proper self-maintenance.  
and you are _nothing_ if not a good tool, aren’t you, sea bee?  
she asks you, minotaur hand gripping your shoulder tight, too tight, biting bone.

        there in the back, you’ve loosened a molar,  
        push it more, with your tongue.  
        It doesn’t take much,  
        it rises out on a pooling of blood,  
                running between your gums,  
                        and over your lips,  
                                down your chin.  
                                reddening foam  
                        spilling out of yourself, helpless to stop  
                or never taught? or never willing?  
        puzzling out in trial and error

in the smudges of the mirror,  
a child still in daily prayer  
                        that something is terribly wrong

you are a fountain  
        red water like wine stains  
        orange in your skin  
        still glows  
        as the blood rises over your head.

you: a diver at the bottom of the ocean  
        lungs choking on your own blood-water

only her dye marks the difference  
between the salt in here  
and the salt out there

each morning, there's a woman in the mirror, singing impossible promises: that you haven't been forgotten, that there are people who love you, beyond the labyrinth. if only you can find the path. one last memory cast in amber and frozen in the green glare of gun flash and shattered glass.  
every day she's harder to hear under all that blood coming out of her mouth.

and you?  
                you’ve been bad.  
                        a bad boy, rub your face in it;  
                                you’ll never learn  
                                                never learn  
no privileges this time around, trust is earned not given  
and how could you, really? breaking her trust like that  
she, who gave everything to you  
and asked so little in return

the minotaur loved you like she loves a good gun  
her ownership engraved by heat and metal  
how could you betray that?  
traitor to your heart, the one she owns

but it’s not her hand that strikes you  
        it’s your own  
        because you’ve brought this on yourself  
        a tool that breaks must be repaired  
        by hammer, by chisel,  
        surgeon’s saw, and doctor’s thread

the men in the white coats watch through opaque glass  
masked faces for masked minds  
if you don’t like being debugged, one states, unmoving  
then don’t bug out  
                seriously, why can’t you appreciate  
how blessed you are? so unique  
-ly privileged, honored and set above  
all your brothers and sisters.

an unlucky skin you can never escape, no hardened bones, no breath of fire. no heightened strength, or superior agility, only the joy of knowing just how little everyone thinks of you and their utter disdain for what you’ve done to your borrowed body, their handiwork. and that’s when they don’t fill your head with numbing chemicals or worse, that droning buzz that always threatens to split you open but never makes good on the promise.

you understand, don’t you?  
it hurts her to see you this way  
                a hurt more real  
                more meaningful  
                then any fleeting mark across your face

it’s only in the light of night, while you’re waiting to wake up  
you can dream of anywhere else, or of getting back

a dozen little promises you trace into the lines of your skin:

no one’s coming for you, not in ships of iron, nor clad in night. the woman in the mirror is translucent; nothing left to bleed. only the memory of paper skin to remind you. theseus isn’t coming, you can see it in stolen photographs. her midnight braid no longer bound by your tarnished silver, hands entwined with some newer, better, prince.

there may be no theseus, but the way out remains  
ariadne, darling, loan the red threads in your arm  
bind it to your wrists and trace the walls  
let it guide you through light  
to dark, past the beast

and it’s heart, hers, beating in your chest  
the one that you’ll vomit up and shove down her throat with  
        every look, every sneer,  
        every backhanded compliment,  
        every call to sympathy,  
        every verbal lashing,  
        every strike of the hand,  
        every unwanted, probing touch,  
        every test and examination,  
        every smug 'good boy,'

drain out her everything  
wring out every memory  
on to sun-parched ground  
and let the sand hollow her out.

you’re going to fucking kill her.


End file.
